Prof Luke Clements has produced an excellent new publication to support disabled people and their carers when they are in dispute with statutory agencies. It is highly practical and a very easy read. See more under Documents on this website.

At the moment in Kirklees we have separate disability services for children, young people and adults, in both health care and social care. The Council is now exploring the opportunity of creating an integrated disability service which will bring those services together to form an ‘All Age Disability Service’ (working title), and would welcome involvement from carers in this process. The invitation letter and reply slip are attached.

IAPT and the South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust Carers Support Service have done a piece of joint work to produce a bite sized “Stress” workshop tailored especially for carers in Kirklees. The poster giving the details is attached.

As the support available to people with a learning disability is under pressure because of the cuts to the Council budget, there has never been a more important time for carers to check that they and the person they care for are getting all the welfare benefits to which they are entitled. There are a number of sources of support to do this. The 'Better off Kirklees' project and online system is geared towards supporting people to claim. The link; https://www.betteroffkirklees.org.uk/#/home

Please would you consider joining a small group of other such carers whose job it is to collect issues of concern to carers, and to take them to the Learning Disability Partnership Board for Kirklees ?

For many years we have been told by parent carers, children and adults with a disability that joined up services across all ages would help to ensure consistency, clarity and ultimately better quality services and support to people living in Kirklees with a disability.

The time is now right to take a good look at what this means as part of our New Council approach.

The University of Cambridge Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Group (CIDDRG) and the Down’s Syndrome Association (DSA) are undertaking a joint consultation in researching dementia in Down’s Syndrome. They want to know what you think about people with Down’s Syndrome taking part in clinical trials.